IS OUR UNIVERSE THE ONLY ONE?
Might our universe – as vast as it is – be simply one of many? We look at the growing evidence that there’s more than one cosmos out there
WORDSDAVID BODDINGTON
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I n 1543, Prussian astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus lay dying. His life’s work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, had just been sent off to be printed. This book, which explained that Earth rotates around the Sun, and not the other way around as had been believed, would forever change how humanity viewed its place in space. We were no longer the centre of the universe.
Nearly 500 years on, we’re facing a similar revolution. The observable universe now stretches 46 billion light years in every direction, but physicists have compelling ideas about what may lie beyond.
DID YOU KNOW?
The ‘many-worlds interpretation’ of quantum mechanics suggests an infinite num
It might just be that there are countless other universes, each one slightly different from the rest.
Indeed, the results of a recent study of the cosmic microwave background – the thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang – make this seemingly outlandish proposition look increasingly likely.
“It might just be that there are countless other universes, each slightly different from the rest”